The Launch

Bec loves family history - and has done for the last 10 years!  I'm a young woman in my 30s and have had various times in my life where I've been literally addicted to doing family history research.  And in case your wondering I'm am a member of the LDS church (Mormon) which is why I got started with this in the first place.  I have four young children and an awesome husband and love being a stay-at-home-mum.  So yes when the family history bug bites me, my day literally revolves around how much research I can fit in between everything else!  So don't ask me why I've started this blog...I really don't know to be honest.  One reason is because I have just started doing some paid family history work for a friend and would love to turn it into a regular income and thought this may eventually drum up some business.  Another reason is because I have some wonderful experiences doing family history research which brings me so much happiness and thought I should start writing them down.  So this is where I've decided to do that.  So for my first entry I thought I would share my first ever family history discovery - that I can remember!

I was about 22 or 23 years old and my LDS chapel had a family history centre but it always looked so dark and mysterious!  Don't ask me why but I was kind of scared to go in!  But every time I walked past the door I just knew it was something I should do.  So finally I found a time to go to the family history centre.  I met a wonderful lady in my ward named Yvonne Vincent.  Can I just say now that if Yvonne had not taken me under her wing and given me so much encouragement and taught me so many skills then I don't know if I would have taken this as far as I have.  So the ice had been broken.  I grew up thinking that my parents had done our family history but when I received a package from my dad with all their information I was excited to see that there was plenty of work still left to do (and that is still the case after 10 years!).

On my second or third visit to the centre Yvonne was helping me to look up my family on the 1881 British Census on micro fiche!  I think the CDs were available at that time but I think the one computer in the centre was being used.  Of course Yvonne was a pro at using the fiche anyway so it didn't take long to find the right one.  My parents had done quite a lot of work on researching our direct line but hadn't been able to add the various siblings to many of the families.  So the 1881 census was going to do that for me.  I put the fiche into the reader and went to the correct frame.  Before I knew it I was reading the names of my ancestors.  Sarah Ann Pawson with son Charles Pawson - names that I already had - and daughters Frances, Georgina and Hannah!!!  I gasped in joy and amazement and caught the attention of everyone in the room.  They were all happy for me to be discovering the delights of family history research.  I just couldn't believe that these names had been sitting in the filing cabinet drawer in the family history centre for a long time just waiting for me to find them!  And it all just happened so quickly.  That was a wonderful experience for me and I have felt uplifted just reliving it now as I type.

That uplifting feeling has confirmed to me that starting this blog is a good thing to do.  I hope that as I share my small but not insignificant experiences I may one day inspire others to search out their kindred dead because when we do I know that it can bring so much happiness into our lives.